ASSESSING THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCALING UP COMMUNITY FORESTRY AND COMMUNITY

FORESTRY ENTERPRISES IN MYANMAR

This report was prepared by a World Bank team led by Martin Fodor and Stephen Ling. The team was composed of Aye Marlar Win, Aung Kyaw Naing, David Gritten, Kyaw Htun, Lesya Verheijen, Lwin Lwin Aung, Martin Greijmans, Nina Doetinchem, Robert Oberndorf, Ronnakorn Triraganon, Thiri Aung, and Werner Kornexl. 

The report describes the process of developing a certificate that is issued by the Lao PDR government to recognize user rights over one rotation period and to facilitate the legal harvesting and transport of timber from teak plantations. Financial valuation was added to the certificates to test the possibility of using standing timber value as loan collateral in local microfinance schemes.

In Vietnam, forests have been under state stewardship for a long time. Degradation of forest resources under state management together with the high costs of forest protection has led to increased involvement of local people in forest management. Since the early 1990s, the Government of Vietnam (GOV) has been promoting the allocation of forest rights to local people as the foundation for development of community forest management (CFM). The initiative, known as Forest Land Allocation (FLA), has been undertaken in various parts of the country, with mixed results.

This publication is focused on oil palm expansion and land tenure in several Southeast Asian palm oil producing countries (the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia) and cross-compares their experiences with the facts and myths, stories and lessons learned from other palm oil producing countries, more specifically, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

Local communities and state forest actors, such as Protection Forest Management Boards (PFMBs), State Forest Companies (SFCs), play equally important roles in forest resource management. Yet local communities have limited legal rights. This is one reason that leads to a lack of forest ownership for local communities. In order to support local communities to effectively engage in sustainable forest management and livelihood development, a fuller set of rights should be legally given to them.

Cộng đồng địa phương đóng vai trò không kém phần quan trọng so với các chủ rừng nhà nước như Ban quản lý rừng phòng hộ hoặc các Công ty lâm nghiệp trong quản lý tài nguyên rừng. Tuy nhiên, quyền của cộng đồng địa phương đối với rừng lại rất hạn chế. Đây là một trong những nguyên nhân dẫn đến việc người dân mất đi tính tự chủ. Vì thế, các cộng đồng cần được trao nhiều quyền hơn để họ có thể tham gia có hiệu quả trong công tác quản lý rừng và phát triển sinh kế bền vững.

Community forestry offers a tried and true model for approaching national Safeguard Information Systems (SIS) under REDD+. RECOFTC agrees with the global consensus that REDD+ SIS should be based upon existing, equitable and participatory systems.

Insight: Notes from the Field is a response to this need, and with this publication, we aim to give practitioners a forum to share field level cases and lessons in Community Forestry (CF) or Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM).  In this edition of Notes from the Field, there are inspirational stories on Community Forestry in Thailand, development of Village Forest Councils in India, experiences on Public Hearing and Public Auditing in community user groups in Nepal, and how to improve buffer zone co-management in protected areas of Vietnam.

An increasing body of evidence shows that forest governance and tenure reforms are central to mitigating a number of problems related to forests, and seriously affect forest-dependent people. On this backdrop, this assessment of South Asian forest tenure systems was initiated to provide a greater understanding of the tenure trends and status in the region that can potentially inform the policy process. This is the synthesis report of forest tenure assessments prepared by country consultants in six countries in South Asia: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, China and Pakistan.

Over 200 participants including 134 international delegates from 20 countries convened on 8–9 August 2011 in Bangkok, Thailand, for two days of deliberations on the potential of community forestry to address some of the biggest challenges we face today. Be it persistent rural poverty, climate change, governance, deforestation, or rights of indigenous and local people, there were questions raised and solutions offered in several packed sessions ending in a Vision 2020 exercise and a Call for Action at the close of the Forum.

Under present and foreseeable economic and social trends in the Asia-Pacific region, can we achieve sustainable forest management and better realize the potential of forests and forestry to contribute to improved human well-being?